Really good essay. A fundamental problem with the argument is the not-quite-articulated assumption that the formal system that WoW embodies, and the socialistic form of organization that it apparently incentivizes, is a meaningful model of real-world conditions. That is not obviously so.
"In rare cases, a very wealthy player will pay a lot of gold to hire thirty-nine other raiders and take all the loot for himself. This is Capitalism. (Please comment below if you have any suggestions for how to improve this??)" hahahahaha!
Thank you for sharing, a perfect read with my morning cup of tea.
Sounds cool but also sounds a lot like scrip, does it have similar downsides? Are players incentivized to stay in dysfunctional guilds because of the sunk cost of their DKP earnings?
The amount of scarcity of choice here is far different from irl as well, if I'm a miner in west virginia there's not infinitely many mining outfits to decide to leave when I'm mistreated.
More likely there's only a few games in town tied to who has the rights to what mountain. In that sense a kind of noncoercive competition between guilds for labor resources seems like a requirement to keep this arrangement healthy, which also sounds like it would benefit from a greater market.
context: was raised on hayek, rand, and mises in high school, trying to think my way away from libertarianism.
There’s a lot to learn from both real and game economies, especially when you look at how players self-organize to solve resource distribution problems in the absence of top-down control.
I also played WoW seriously during its early years, especially through Burning Crusade, but not as high achieving as you, godGamer. What ultimately drove me away was the time commitment. As a college student, it was hard to balance top-tier raiding with classes, friends, and the occasional night out. When WoW Classic came back, I felt a huge pull—but being a new dad at the time made my priorities crystal clear. It seems a little silly to type, but I was crushed to see that opportunity fade away for me.
These days, I mess around with Path of Exile, which has an entirely different kind of economy. It’s brutally individualistic. There’s no DKP, no "true" guild structure—just a market-driven chaos where your ability to accumulate currency (divine orbs, mostly) rests entirely on how efficiently you can grind. And when I fall behind, which I always do, it feels like a personal failure. That’s very different from WoW, where you were part of a collective, and your rewards came through cooperation and consistent contribution. Side note: PoE does have high-powered “guilds” that control market forces in the game, but it is purely economical - no sense of communal progress. There's also more "group-find" dynamics of a smaller amount of players working together to share resources which is much more to my liking.
If I were to drive a point home, it’s that systems like DKP serve a meaningful purpose. You’re rewarded not just for raw output, but for showing up, being part of something, and contributing over time. The idea that DKP can't be loaned, hoarded, or speculated on is a great quality. What if real-world tokens, things like access to housing, education, or healthcare, were similarly grounded in contribution and use-value, not speculation or wealth extraction? What would this actually look like? Housing and education, I could see. Healthcare is trickier.
I’m not sure if this is exactly in line with your thesis, but your piece opened up that line of thinking for me. I asked a similar question in a past comment, but how do we take these ideas and conversations and take meaningful action towards a different way of doing things in the US? There are 509 days between now and the 2026 midterms. What if we did something with all this knowledge and took advantage of the inflection point we currently find ourselves in?
I might be wrong because I haven’t played in a few years, but i don’t think DKP is used as commonly these days. now that raids are played in smaller groups (raids can be run in groups of 10-25 with bosses scaling based on size), guilds with dedicated rosters will usually give out loot based on who in that role has the worst item in that slot. basically they maximize the value of each piece, and because guilds function as one unit, players are less likely to be salty that someone else got multiple pieces in one night when they got nothing.
which I suppose furthers your thesis, really. and it’s a great one.
Really good essay. A fundamental problem with the argument is the not-quite-articulated assumption that the formal system that WoW embodies, and the socialistic form of organization that it apparently incentivizes, is a meaningful model of real-world conditions. That is not obviously so.
"In rare cases, a very wealthy player will pay a lot of gold to hire thirty-nine other raiders and take all the loot for himself. This is Capitalism. (Please comment below if you have any suggestions for how to improve this??)" hahahahaha!
Thank you for sharing, a perfect read with my morning cup of tea.
Josh it's good to know there's another 30-something leftist millennial who was semi-raised by his World of Warcraft guild.
This was excellent. I'll be sharing w the bros
This has given me a new perspective on capitalism:
With DKP as an option, it feels like the capitalist’s profits are a tax for the cooperation/commitment challenged.
(Also, it feels like the most community focused guilds will outperform the more individualistic ones. How is the inequality between guilds resolved?)
Sounds cool but also sounds a lot like scrip, does it have similar downsides? Are players incentivized to stay in dysfunctional guilds because of the sunk cost of their DKP earnings?
The amount of scarcity of choice here is far different from irl as well, if I'm a miner in west virginia there's not infinitely many mining outfits to decide to leave when I'm mistreated.
More likely there's only a few games in town tied to who has the rights to what mountain. In that sense a kind of noncoercive competition between guilds for labor resources seems like a requirement to keep this arrangement healthy, which also sounds like it would benefit from a greater market.
context: was raised on hayek, rand, and mises in high school, trying to think my way away from libertarianism.
There’s a lot to learn from both real and game economies, especially when you look at how players self-organize to solve resource distribution problems in the absence of top-down control.
I also played WoW seriously during its early years, especially through Burning Crusade, but not as high achieving as you, godGamer. What ultimately drove me away was the time commitment. As a college student, it was hard to balance top-tier raiding with classes, friends, and the occasional night out. When WoW Classic came back, I felt a huge pull—but being a new dad at the time made my priorities crystal clear. It seems a little silly to type, but I was crushed to see that opportunity fade away for me.
These days, I mess around with Path of Exile, which has an entirely different kind of economy. It’s brutally individualistic. There’s no DKP, no "true" guild structure—just a market-driven chaos where your ability to accumulate currency (divine orbs, mostly) rests entirely on how efficiently you can grind. And when I fall behind, which I always do, it feels like a personal failure. That’s very different from WoW, where you were part of a collective, and your rewards came through cooperation and consistent contribution. Side note: PoE does have high-powered “guilds” that control market forces in the game, but it is purely economical - no sense of communal progress. There's also more "group-find" dynamics of a smaller amount of players working together to share resources which is much more to my liking.
If I were to drive a point home, it’s that systems like DKP serve a meaningful purpose. You’re rewarded not just for raw output, but for showing up, being part of something, and contributing over time. The idea that DKP can't be loaned, hoarded, or speculated on is a great quality. What if real-world tokens, things like access to housing, education, or healthcare, were similarly grounded in contribution and use-value, not speculation or wealth extraction? What would this actually look like? Housing and education, I could see. Healthcare is trickier.
I’m not sure if this is exactly in line with your thesis, but your piece opened up that line of thinking for me. I asked a similar question in a past comment, but how do we take these ideas and conversations and take meaningful action towards a different way of doing things in the US? There are 509 days between now and the 2026 midterms. What if we did something with all this knowledge and took advantage of the inflection point we currently find ourselves in?
I might be wrong because I haven’t played in a few years, but i don’t think DKP is used as commonly these days. now that raids are played in smaller groups (raids can be run in groups of 10-25 with bosses scaling based on size), guilds with dedicated rosters will usually give out loot based on who in that role has the worst item in that slot. basically they maximize the value of each piece, and because guilds function as one unit, players are less likely to be salty that someone else got multiple pieces in one night when they got nothing.
which I suppose furthers your thesis, really. and it’s a great one.
TY for this.